Category: Security

There is a massive DDoS attack happening right now. Actually DDOS attacks happen all the time, what makes today’s attack especially worrisome is the scale and penetration into one of the world largest DNS provides, Dyn.What is a DDoS?
DDoS attacks, at the most basic level, work like a system overload. An attacker sends a flurry of packet of garbage data (data is sent on the web in ‘packets’), to an intended recipient. In this case, the recipient was Dyn’s DNS servers.

The servers are so overwhelmed with the garbage packets, they can no longer handle the incoming connections, eventually slowing down significantly or totally shutting down.

While most companies have systems to mitigate such attacks, sophisticated hackers can constantly barrage servers, essentially blowing a hole through them (like a dam) and creating a flood of crap. The whole server shuts down as result.

Is DDoS easy?
Sure, a low level hacker could take your photography site if they hate you. They probably couldn’t take out a huge hosting provider though.

What made DDoS so easy nowadays, is that there is basically DDoS for rent. You can just pay someone and they will DDoS for you.

Are DDoS attacks dangerous?
How dangerous they are varies, can be just a site taken down, or like in this case a name server provider, so it affect more people.

Bank DDoS attacks can create extreme vulnerability in the financial markets, so they many levels defense (though with enough money and skills, hackers can take them down).

Why do I hear about DDoS attacks so much today?
The internet is built on quite fragile technology . TCP/IP and the routing techniques used was never designed to withstand anything like DDoS, it was built for private networks.

We have entered the grim reality of these attack and how fragile our internet is. This isn’t going away anytime soon. If anything, these attacks, be they on the political system (like the Russian hackers trying to destabilize the election), to corporate systems, to financial systems are intended to create chaos.